Coming Back to Cannabis? Here’s What You Need to Know

The Return to Cannabis

Here is an interesting article on the topic of individuals starting to consume cannabis after years away from the plant. Prohibition pushed people into the closet or they risked opportunities in life. It is truly a disappointing truth here in the United States. For too long, lives were unnecessarily destroyed because of cannabis. Thankfully we live in a world where we can encourage people to be honest with themselves and others. Cannabis is not an evil, it is not a vice. Any guess what? Good people smoke cannabis too.

Here are some tips you should know.

Go low and slow with THC, until you know how you will react. No one wants you to have a bad experience.

Don’t go eating more edibles, because you don’t think they “worked.” Give it time… like a couple hours.

Be smart and responsible. The great thing about Adult consumption, it’s legal for Adults.

Oh and have fun!

-Dabbin Dad

By Jerry Langton

Ryan wants to get high. Like many of his generation, the 55-year-old Toronto-area video editor is intrigued by the idea of legal recreational cannabis. His two kids are away at university and he likes the idea of relaxing and winding down at the end of the day. Seriously considering cannabis as a healthier alternative to drinking, he’s still a bit cautious about trying it for the first time in 25 years. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he tells me with a laugh. “And I’ve heard that the potency these days is out of this world.”

He’s got a point. Back in early 2017, Tommy Chong—who bills himself as comedian, actor, writer, director, musician, dancer and activist who “occasionally smokes a little bit of pot, man”—tweeted: “The weed today is so much (more) potent than the weed we had yesterday. Chong’s Choice eh?”

Who would know more about cannabis potency than good ol’ Chong? I’d like to nominate Mahmoud ElSohly, director of the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Research Project and president and laboratory director of ElSohly Laboratories, the only supplier of research marijuana in the United States. Between 1994 and 2015, his team studied 38,681 samples of non-medicinal cannabis. The results were astounding. The 1994 samples averaged 4% THC, while the 2015 samples averaged 12%, a threefold increase, with many of them as high as 15%. Similarly, High Times magazine reported in 2017 that a California strain known as Godfather OG weighed in at a remarkable 34%. When Chong was smoking back in the 1970s, almost all cannabis was less than 1%.

That kind of leaves people like Ryan in something of a bind. The last time he tried cannabis was when he “smoked up” with some friends at university back in 1983. He knows a lot has changed and he wants to be well-informed and not surprised. There are a lot of Canadians like him—middle-aged and even older people who would like to use cannabis after a long time away from it or not even trying it in their youth at all.

Luckily, there are plenty of resources for them. “A big part of our job is to promote education and awareness, like the differences between edibles and smoking, about potencies and strains,” said Andy Lee, communications director for NORML Canada. “We don’t want anybody to eat a whole cookie and get super high.”

The biggest change in potency has been seen in edibles, which—back in the day Ryan tried them—were extremely limited in variety and often not very effective. These days, however, with sophisticated factories churning out clinical-quality edibles, tinctures and other products, the risk of being accidentally hit by too much THC is very real to returning and first-time users.